Board overseeing Las Vegas Convention Center upgrade gets project history

If everything goes according to plan, you won’t hear too much about the new public board overseeing the expansion of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

But if board members aren’t on the same page with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority board of directors, you will.

The seven-member Oversight Panel for Convention Facilities in Clark County met for the first time Thursday and got a quick history on preparations for the $1.4 billion expansion and renovation of the convention center campus.

LVCVA executives spent 1½ hours explaining why they believe expansion and upgrades to the convention center are essential for Las Vegas to maintain its dominance of the meetings and trade-show industry.

Over the next eight to 10 years, the Oversight Panel will provide suggestions and review decisions reached by the LVCVA board of directors and its contracted construction manager, Sacramento, California-based Cordell Corp., on the project.

If the oversight panel — a collection of development, construction and financial experts primarily from the resort community — disagree with the LVCVA or Cordell’s construction strategy, it could vote to delay implementation of a contract or procedure. However, the LVCVA board could override the panel’s decision with a supermajority vote, 10 of 14 members.

The timing of the panel’s monthly meetings are set so that the LVCVA board and the oversight panel meet within about two weeks of each other.

“But we have no desire to present a plan that ever reaches that point,” said Terry Jicinsky, the LVCVA’s senior vice president of operations.

On Thursday, the panel, which is not compensated and has no budget, received a broad overview of what’s expected to be an eight-year program to build a new 600,000-square-foot exhibit hall, 100,000 square feet of new meeting rooms, a corridor to connect existing exhibit halls, a new entrance on the east side of the building and to do all that construction without disrupting any existing major conventions.

LVCVA President and CEO Rossi Ralenkotter noted that when the Men’s Apparel Guild in California — the MAGIC fashion trade show that has become one of Las Vegas’ largest twice-a-year gatherings — was meeting at the Los Angeles Convention Center, it opted to come to Las Vegas temporarily when the Los Angeles facility had a construction project.

MAGIC never returned to Los Angeles.

“We want to make sure that doesn’t happen to us here while construction is underway,” he said.

Officials noted that Chicago convention industry leaders have stated publicly that they want to steal convention business away from Las Vegas.

Cordell principal Terry Miller, LVCVA chief financial officer Rana Lacer, Ralenkotter and Jicinsky gave an overview of the LVCVA plan and how it has been broken into four phases, the first of which has been completed.

The first phase was acquiring and demolishing the Riviera and converting the space into a parking lot and outdoor exhibit space.

The oversight panel will be involved with Phases 2 and 3, which would include building the new exhibition hall on land currently used as a parking lot at Paradise Road and Convention Center Drive in Phase 2 and building the conveyance corridor, the new meeting rooms and new entry and all renovations in Phase 3.

The fourth phase would involve building on the Riviera site if market conditions demand it.

This year will be dedicated to planning and design and ground isn’t expected to be broken until early 2018 on the exhibition hall. The LVCVA doesn’t expect to use the new hall until 2021.

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.